AGENCY BACKS OPENING BORDER TO LONG-HAUL MEXICAN TRUCKS

[OregonBlue]

By Paul M. Krawzak
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

August 18, 2007

WASHINGTON – A federal transportation agency yesterday defended President Bush's plan to open the border to long-haul Mexican truck traffic in a response to overwhelmingly negative public views of the proposal.

The 27-page defense appearing in the Federal Register advances the controversial cross-border trucking pilot program one step closer to implementation.

Bush has sought to conduct the program as part of his effort to comply with a provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement requiring the United States and Mexico to open their borders to each other's commercial trucks.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which would conduct the program, acknowledged that the vast majority of the more than 2,300 public comments it received were opposed to the proposed one-year experiment.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20070818-9999-1b18mextruck.html

They are going ahead with this no matter what anyone says! Contact your Reps and contact the West Coast Governors. This will break the backs of not only the trucking unions but it will destroy West Coast ports and Longshoremen's Unions. Daily KOS is claiming that it is all a ruse but, the plan is to start bringing Asian imports into Mexican ports, put it on Mexican trucks and ship it into the U.S.

This will allow them to bypass West Coast ports who employ union labor and American trucking companies, many of which pay union wages. When will it all stop?

[bahrbearian]

1. Ignore the people . they gotta do whats best for the Corporate Hogs

[madrchsod]

2. real simple...wait till they want to refuel.

course there is always "safety inspections" in the middle of nowhere and "sorry" it`s going to take weeks to fix your truck"....ya there`s more than one way to keep them off the road...

[Wiley50]

3. On the Bright Side: The Marijuana Supply Should Increase Dramaticly

But everything else about it sucks

[WhiteTara]

34. they use Paraquat...don't smoke that stuff!

:hi:

[sarcasmo]

4. It will ruin the trucking industry and that's why Bush wants this to happen.

It will push freight rates down and raise profits for the Corporations. This former truck driver knows it's a bad, bad idea. Kick and Nom

[billyoc]

5. Better start "up-armoring" those thangs... n/t

[VP505]

6. Absolutely this needs

a very very loud no and not only no but HELL NO! Once again we see a program that Bu$h wants badly, that ought ought to be a big clue that more than a few people are in for another hosing. :banghead:

[RB TexLa]

7. Maybe if we didn't have a British insurance company operating major ports in the US

there would be less freight destined for US consumption that is being unloaded in Mexico.

[Subdivisions]

8. WE THE PEOPLE SAY "NO!" GODDAMMIT! n/t

[OregonBlue]

10. They do not care what we say. They are going to break the truckers

and longshoremen's unions and they don't care what it takes. Where are the Western Governor's on this? I wrote to Kulongoski months ago and he was not even aware of it. Said he would look into it and discuss with California and Washington. Haven't heard anything here in Oregon since but then again, The Oregonian is not the best paper I've ever read.

[rodeodance]

9. crapola

[MindPilot]

11. Please no!! There are already enough semis clogging the drive time

I have to spend every commute maneuvering around those self-propelled road blocks. Hardly a day goes by that I don't hear the four words, "big", "rig", "sig" and "alert" in the same sentence.

And given what we know about profit motives and government oversight, you know that virtually every truck you see is probably in need of some maintenance that;s been deferred in favor of "keepin' 'r' rollin'".

[OnionPatch]

13. Unfortunately for American truck drivers

the number may stay the same, the trucks and drivers will just be different. That means non-unionized drivers and piece of crap trucks polluting our air even more.

I feel bad for American truckers, but here where I live, I see so many truck drivers with stickers and signs supporting Bush and the Republicans, that the thought does pop into my mind, "You reap what you sow."

[MindPilot]

15. I agree. Do you see those "Covenant Transport" trailers?

With "It's a child not a choice" painted on the back?

There's a freeway overpass here in San Diego with semi frequently parked on it. Painted on the side in huge letters it says "JESUS IS LORD! Not a swear word".

Whenever I see it, I just have to say "Aw Christ on a semi! There's that goddamn truck!"

[OnionPatch]

16. Yes, every day.

And worse.
Edited to add: There's one that says something like, "Supporting our Troops! No Comfort or Aid to the Enemy!" :wtf:
I'm guessing this translates to, "If you don't support the war, you're comforting the enemy."
Jerks.

[Ikonoklast]

18. You would be wrong

Maintenance is one of the things that keep that vehicle rolling. A broken-down truck makes *0* money. No maintenance and truck no go, really, really quickly.

I'll put the maintenance of my tractor-trailer up against your personal vehicle, any time. I have to pass a federal inspection, and am subject to random state inspections at any time. I have been inspected three times in a twenty-four hour period, by Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

I bet you don't inspect your brakes and adjust them every week. All five axles, all ten brakes.
I bet you don't check your tires' inflation every day. All eighteen of them.
I bet you don't check your fluid levels every day.

I have NEVER not passed an inspection, or been put out-of-service for a maintenance issue. You can look up my DOT number(if you had it)and see for yourself.

I am no different from many, many independent truckers just like me. It is my business, and if I don't invest in it, I go broke. Quickly.

And every single thing you own including the house you live in and everything in it, the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the car you drive and the gasoline in it, came by truck.

[MindPilot]

29. Of course guys like you are not the problem.

I've worked at places that fixed trucks and trust me there is no one more grateful than an owner-operator back on the road quickly with a working air conditioner. I know first-hand how important the maintenance is.

If you were operating in that 25 mile north of the border area, I'd bet you would see what we're talking about.

I'd also be willing to guess that the inspection officials harass the hell out of guys like you while giving the big corporate operators a pass.

[Ikonoklast]

32. Not really

Company trucks sometimes are out on the road for weeks at a time, and routine maintenance can get overlooked. They can be easy pickings for a diesel bear. Some of the larger carriers have a so-so maintenance record because of that; see the FMCSA site.

All it takes is one tire below acceptable tread depth, and you got a violation.

On the other hand, if a freshly washed and waxed large car gets pulled in for inspection, the creeper cop knows that he won't get an eyeful of leaking oil when he rolls underneath.

Like the one inspector told me, he liked inspecting clean rigs. Made his job easier.

I know the border area, and those trucks will not be leaving the exclusion zone. There are brand-new power units just waiting in Mexico, with brand-new trailers behind them. The local cross-border guys will be out of a job.

[gulfcoastliberal]

12. Here's a PDF detailing exactly how and why this is unstoppable:

http://www.kcsmartport.com/pdf/SmtPrtOneRoute.pdf

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

14. One part of this plan is to kill the dock workers union in California. Goods will

be shipped to Mexico and brought into our country this way.

It also might be the beginning of the North American Union. On Monday, Shrub will be in Canada meeting with the President of Mexico and Canadian Prime Minister. I just have a feeling they will be signing off on some sort of deal.

[OregonBlue]

17. I'd say it's time for the truckers to surround the capitol like they had planned

earlier in the year. They need to completely shut-down Washington with their big rigs until the Administration backs off this b.s.

[seafan]

19. Effects: West Coast Unions destroyed, jobs stolen, breached nat'l security, obliterated sovereignty

This is a very serious threat to our country. Everyone, please contact your Senators/Representatives and demand that this STOP NOW. And spread the word to everyone, because the bulk of MSM are sitting on this!


This thread has a tremendous amount of related information:

CNN's Lou Dobbs reveals illegal political-military-industrial elite agenda to destroy Canada,US,Mexico, February 23, 2007




Also from that thread:


From the U.S.: Surrendering our sovereignty

by Cliff Kinkaid
February 23, 2007

.....the “Security and Prosperity Partnership Ministerial Meeting” in Canada today is a subject worthy of some attention from our major media. It springs from a process, set in motion by President Bush about two years ago, involving what many conservatives see as surrender of U.S. sovereignty to a trilateral entity that could assume the form of a North American Union, much like the European Union that now dictates to the citizens of 27 European states.


“The Security and Prosperity Partnership was launched in 2005 to ensure continued economic prosperity in Canada, the United States and Mexico, and to increase the security of citizens in all three countries,” says a release from the Canadian government.
It sounds innocent enough. Those in attendance are supposed to include, from the government of Canada: Peter MacKay, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety, and Maxime Bernier, Minister of Industry.
Their Mexican and U.S. counterparts are Secretary of Foreign Affairs Patricia Espinosa, Secretary of the Interior Francisco Javier Ramírez Acuña, Secretary of Economy Eduardo Sojo Garza-Aldape, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez.


The Canadian government says that a “media availability” will be held so that photographs can be taken and a few questions asked of the various officials. My question would be: what is the legal basis for the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)? My research can find no legal basis for this complicated process, now about two years old, involving the futures of our three countries. ......
A Canadian report describes the SPP as “an international framework for trilateral and bilateral cooperation in North America” that is “not a formal international treaty” or “an overarching binding legal agreement.” But what is an “international framework” that commits U.S. officials from various federal agencies to working with officials of two other countries? Why is such a process not subjected to congressional scrutiny and approval?


It sounds suspiciously like the “non-binding resolution” that the House passed opposing President Bush's policy in Iraq, except for the fact that, on the basis of this allegedly unsigned SPP document, federal officials have entered into other agreements with the governments of Mexico and Canada which have been signed. In other words, this is a non-binding agreement or announcement that has binding consequences on the American people.
The SPP refers, for example, to a “signed” agreement with Mexico on consumer goods and a “signed” agreement with Canada on pipeline regulations. They are described by the SPP as “accomplishments.” Who signed these documents? It doesn't say. Why should they be signed when the original agreement creating the SPP is not? It doesn't explain.

White House spokesman Tony Snow has cavalierly dismissed concerns about this process, saying the charge that the U.S. is being submerged in a North American Union and developing a common currency with Canada and Mexico is an “urban legend.”

.....

This should be a call to immediate action to halt this stealth takeover of our country.

[gulfcoastliberal]

28. I really think there's something to it: private NAFTA superhighway, Mexican ports, Mexican trucks

and trains, etc.

NAFTA Rail line:

From http://www.kcsmartport.com/pdf/SmtPrtOneRoute.pdf:

In April 2005, Kansas City Southern completed
purchase of a controlling interest in
Transportacion Ferroviaria Mexicana (TFM),
enabling TFM, The Kansas City Southern
Railway and The Texas Mexican Railway
Company to operate under common leadership,
creating a seamless transportation system
spanning the heart of North America known as
“The Nafta Railway.”
The acquisition created a single 1,300-mile
railroad connecting the Midwestern United
States, central Mexico and Mexico’s Pacific
seaports. The union of the three railroads will spur even
greater investment in cross-border transportation
infrastructure, implementation of advanced cargo
tracing and tracking systems, and improved
security. Kansas City Southern is installing Spanish
language versions of its computer operating
system (MCS) in an effort to increase train
speeds, reduce waiting times at terminals and
enable the free flow of locomotives and rail cars
between the United States and Mexico via
Kansas City Southern’s railroad bridge at Laredo,
Texas.

Privatized "NAFTA Superhighway"-complete with Lockheed-Martin military "Total Domain Awareness" (sounds familiar...) surveillance technologies:

This document details Lockheed Martin's plan to utilize NASCO to track, control, and tax “all modes of transportation.” NASCO has insisted again and again that it does not promote a “NAFTA Superhighway.” Upon review of these documents, it’s clear that NASCO and Lockheed Martin have a “better” idea: attach a tracking device to all modes of transportation and, as a “long-term objective,” “design, fund, implement, operate and maintain a self-sustaining business that facilitates surface transportation.” Maybe NASCO wasn’t lying when it said it doesn’t support a new “NAFTA Superhighway.” Why would anyone want to improve any infrastructure when Lockheed Martin and NASCO can simply attach a tracking device to all modes of transportation and have “revenue sharing” with the government? This sounds like a pretty profitable endeavor for a self-described “non-profit organization.” The interplay of Lockheed Martin (a for profit company), NASCO (a “non-profit” organization), and various governmental entities in this whole scheme is disturbing to say the least. However, they are not surprising to those who pay close attention. One wonders how the revenue made off of the populace is to be parceled out between these various interests. Oh wait, NASCO and Lockheed Martin are going to work that out in their “definitive agreement.” It’s about time Lockheed Martin got a cut out of my trip to the grocery store.

The “centerpiece” of this plan is the concept of Total Domain Awareness. What is “Total Domain Awareness?” It is an Orwellian nightmare involving: the ability to “utomatically gather, correlate, and interpret fragments of multi-source (Radar, AIS, & GPS tracks, Open Source, Intelligence, Watch list & Law Enforcement Report, CCTV, Bioterrorism sensors) data together into one collaborative portal-based environment .” This sounds even worse than a huge superhighway, no wonder why NASCO never mentions any of these details on its website.

All of this information is going to be fed into one central location that NASCO has shamelessly named the "Center of Excellence." At least Orwell's tyrants had the dignity to be creative with the names of their various maniacal bureaucracies. So, who or what will administer the “Center of Excellence?” Well, what better place to house this Orwellian nightmare than: “Lockheed Martin’s militarized GTN (Global Transportation Network) Command and Control System?” The Total Domain Awareness system has already “been installed and is operating and is operating in Washington, DC & Lockheed Martin’s Center for Innovation (The “Lighthouse”) in Chesapeake, VA .”

http://nathanmhansen.blogspot.com/2007/05/nasco-lockheed-martin-and-total-domain.html

[Lasher]

20. Passport? We don't need no stinkin' passport!

Wonder how many people you can cram into one of those trailers?

Welcome to the United States of Mexica.

[AzDar]

21. Kick!

:kick:

[GOPisEvil]

22. Try driving on Interstate 35 in Texas. It's scary enough NOW.

I'm not all that sure about the safety of some of the American trucks I share the road with. I don't want to think about the Mexican trucks.

[cascadiance]

23. Related to this, a month or so ago I had dinner with an old classmate of mine who's now a trucker...

I knew this guy from back in times when I was in middle school and high school living overseas in Turkey. He was a little obnoxious then, but people have changed a lot from there from those days, and I hadn't seen him since that time. He called me up one Saturday morning when he was driving through here, and we both had dinner at the local Turkish restaurant here in San Diego.

We talked about old times mostly in a friendly manner, but when the subject went around to politics, he was a pretty die-hard anti-liberal anti-Democrat guy that hated folks like Waxman, etc. so I didn't go into it too much. Talked about his kid going off to the special forces in the military proudly, etc. We talked about a number of different things, but I didn't dwell too much on my feelings on political subjects as I knew it might create more division than solve anything.

I did then however chose to ask him what he felt as a trucker about this North American Union that Bushco was conjuring up and how his fellow truckers felt about it. He says that his fellow truckers had a lot of bad feelings about it and I remember him saying that that was a sore spot with him too, but it was really hard to get him to connect the dots that this administration was working against his interests in this area. He then tried to rationalize plans of theirs to "fit in" to this setup by having more specialized trucking companies (in terms of what things they hauled and which business sector they served, etc.) that would be more immune to this "competition", and that that this being the way capitalism worked, this is the way they'd have to adapt to this situation.

It was kind of frustrating, because I was seeing a guy that epitomized why we've been losing elections, etc. Folks like these guys pay more attention to the scare stories that the Limbaughs of the world say about "libs", etc. than they wan to really think through how Bushco is screwing them personally with his policies.

And this was a guy who in our music class (we were a little young at the time to be hippies back in the late 60's and early 70's), was the first to introduce most of us in our class to the old Woodstock triple LP soundtrack which he brought into class where many of us (including myself) heard it for the first time then. My times have changed!

I only hope that he's seeing what's happening with this agency, and thinks more again about his rejection of Democrats and starts thinking for himself more now!

[VP505]

24. Some Contact Info:

Washington Gov: http://www.governor.wa.gov/contact/default.asp

Calif Gov: http://gov.ca.gov/interact#contact

Oregon Gov: http://governor.oregon.gov/Gov/contact_us.shtml

[OregonBlue]

26. Thank you. PLEASE contact these governors. Also contact the Teamsters and

Longshoremen and ask them to march on Washington!!!!!!!!!!

Mail: Teamster.org
c/o Communications Dept.
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
25 Louisiana Avenue
Washington, DC 20001

Phone: [phone]

International Longshoremen's Assoc., AFL-CIO, CLC
17 Battery Place, Suite 930
New York, NY 10004

(212)-425-1200
FAX: [phone]

[Raksha]

25. But couldn't they be hauling in dirty bombs and suitcase nukes and...

you know, national security and terra-terra-terra and all that scary stuff they always invoke when they want to spy on us. But when it comes to breaking the unions, they suddenly don't give a shit about national security. Not even when there actually *IS* a security risk! Goddam hypocrites.

[moondust]

27. ...illegal immigrants.

[WinkyDink]

30. Are we in the NAU yet?

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

31. Maybe very soon. Shrub is mtg. with the Pres. of Mexico and PM of Canada tomorrow.

Who the heck knows what they'll be brewing amongst them.

[bluesmail]

33. NAU-tin foil hat

Maybe this is the reason China is being seen as a poisoner of products? To get support for the NAU? I really don't know.

[Cobalt-60]

35. I saw a probable intruder near saint louis

Flat faced - "cab over" trucks have been largely phased out of US use.
There were safety and comfort problems . Most of them went south.
So any time you see one of these flat faced trucks it will almost certainly be Mexican.
My CDL friends constantly lament about waiting behind non english speaking drivers as they struggle to function in truck stops deep inside the US.
I would hope that our cops will be on these things as if they were loaded with teenagers.
They will always be able to find something wrong with them.
Edited on orders from my grammar